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Stove Award winner announced!

The late Australian philosopher David Stove once ran a competition to find the Worst Argument in the World. Stove’s competition has now been revived – by me, just now – and the winner will be announced in the very next sentence. It’s Thomas E. Ricks, noted Washington Post military correspondent and author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq and The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008.

Ricks and Keith Pavlischek of First Things have been carrying on an exchange over the justice of the war in Iraq. In response to Ricks’ (quite correct) observation that “invading a country pre-emptively on false premises [fails to meet] Aquinas’ second condition” for a just war (viz. the just cause condition), Pavlischek responded (also quite correctly) that Ricks’ point is irrelevant to the present case, since President Bush and those who voted to authorize the war did not know at the time of authorization that the premises in question (e.g. those concerning WMD) were false.

Well, folks, Ricks’ rejoinder is what won him the Stove Award. Drum roll, please…

And here it is:

It is an interesting response but I am not buying it. Invading Iraq was wrong and executed on false beliefs, even if he and Sen. Levin, and many others, thought they were right. If what you believed was false but you thought it was true, that makes it okay? Would Augustine settle for such a low standard?

For most readers, I trust that no comment is needed. Ricks’ worthiness of the Stove Award is manifest and unchallengeable. Despite some formidable competition, at the end of the day no other candidates even came close. (Eat your hearts out, Georges and Brian!)

But I suspect that Ricks, given his evident humility, will fail to see why he should be so honored. So, some commentary, just for him.

Suppose Ricks comes across a starving homeless Iraq war vet begging on the sidewalk and, moved with compassion, hands him a Jackson. Suppose further that said vet takes his $20, walks into the nearest McDonald’s, and orders a much-needed meal. After being handed the money, the clerk runs his special pen across it and… it’s a counterfeit! (One that someone else had passed the hapless Ricks earlier in the day.) The vet is arrested. He is unspeakably abused in jail by a gang of anti-war protesters who’d been arrested the same day for vandalizing a Starbucks, and into whose cell he had been placed. At the end of his rope, he commits suicide.

Ricks is guilty of a horrendous crime, is he not? For he gave the vet the $20 bill on a false premise, viz. that the bill was genuine. And look what happened as a result!

“But he didn’t know it was a counterfeit! His intentions were noble!” you say?

Let’s let Ricks himself respond to that dodge: “If what you believed was false but you thought it was true, that makes it okay? Would Augustine settle for such a low standard?” By his own words he stands condemned.

Or not. In reality, of course, Ricks would in this scenario be totally blameless. He did what all of us must do, and the most that any of us can do: He did the best he could with the information available to him. He was also tragically mistaken. But that tells us nothing about his moral character, or the moral character of his act. In other words, Ricks’ implicit premise, viz. “Someone who acts on false premises, even unknowingly, is guilty of moral failing” is false.

Blindingly obvious, you say? Why of course it is. Except to someone absolutely desperate to accuse those who supported the war in Iraq, not simply of erroneous judgment, but of grave immorality.

As one who initially supported the war in Iraq but eventually changed my mind, Ed's reasoning explains why I can't be as critical of Bush & Co. as many liberals (and antiwar conservatives) are. It has never been proven to my satisfaction that the Bush admin. knew that the intelligence info they'd received was bad, but went in anyways. In other words, "Bush lied, people died" doesn't seem to have been true, at least initially.

My own position - that at best the war can be characterized as an unjust mistake (convicting and executing a bad person for a crime he did not commit is an analogue I have suggested) though there is evidence (see e.g. The One Percent Doctrine) that the Bush administration self-consciously set aside just war criteria - has never been all that popular with much of anybody.

I would love to hear more about this evidence that the Bush administration "self-consciously set it aside."

I personally know several people both in and out of the Bush administration at the time who claim the exact opposite--that Bush himself in particular and many others in his administration were very much attentive to just war reasoning.

I apologize for the length of this thing but I'm not sure everyone can access it online. Given the recent bruhaha with Ricks I thought this might help to clarify where I'm coming from on all this. Shortly after returning from Iraq I used the occasion a a review article on George Packer's The Assassin's Gate to come to grips with Iraq. This was written in Dec 2005 and still pretty much summarizes my views. In fact, events since the have reinforced them.

Unlike allegations that the Bush Administration knowingly deceived the American people about Iraq's possession of WMD, the charge that the administration failed to properly plan for the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq cannot be dismissed as mere partisanship. While Democrats have every reason to highlight the early mistakes and Republicans have reason to downplay them, there seems to be a growing consensus that the entire affair was poorly planned and managed.

In the months leading to the invasion of Iraq, George Packer writes, "a who's who of foreign policy and military think tanks," including the Rand Corporation, the Army War College, the United States Institute of Peace, and the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies, produced reports that "were striking for their unanimity of opinion. Security and reconstruction in postwar Iraq would require large numbers of troops for an extended period, and international cooperation would be essential." None of these, Packer observes, seems to have penetrated the Oval Office, nor did similar warnings and assessments from frustrated military experts inside the Pentagon, particularly the office of Stability and Peace Operations, or from the State Department's "Future of Iraq Project."

Even a figure as influentially placed as Marine General Anthony Zinni, Gen. Tommy Franks' predecessor at U.S. Central Command, was ignored after urging CENTCOM to dust off Operation Desert Crossing, an on-the-shelf plan for reconstruction following regime change in Iraq. The litany of missed opportunities continues with a rebuffed bipartisan offer of assistance from the conservative Heritage Foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. Finally, Packer reminds us of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's testimony before Congress, in which Shinseki concluded that, based on his experience in the Balkans, postwar Iraq would require "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers." In return for this forthright but unwelcome assessment, for which he was publicly rebuked by Paul Wolfowitz, Shinseki was sent into early retirement.

In short, there was no shortage of well-informed observers inside and outside the government who believed that providing security and reconstruction in post-Saddam Iraq would be a most arduous task requiring, among other things, substantially higher troop levels than would be needed to destroy the regime. Given these warnings and assessments, the most prudent course would have been to hope for the best and plan for the worst. And yet, as Packer reminds us, by mid-February 2003, only a month before the invasion, "it was becoming clear to people paying attention that the administration wasn't remotely prepared for dealing with post war Iraq."

I can confirm the rising frustration of many within the defense and national security establishment. We were quite confident that we were going to war, but were increasingly frustrated that, as one senior military officer put it at a planning meeting in early 2003, Phase IV (the military term for postwar peace and security operations) was a "big black hole." As Packer summarizes it, "Plan A was that the Iraqi government would be quickly decapitated, security would be turned over to remnants of the Iraqi police and army, international troops would soon arrive, and most American forces would leave within a few months. There was no Plan B."

At the time, I found it all a bit puzzling. How could it be that those most committed to a vision of a democratic and stable Iraq, those most committed to Iraq's central role in the broader strategic vision for the war against Islamic extremism, those most committed to the Bush Doctrine, and thus those most vulnerable to criticism if the situation became unglued, simply ignored these ample warnings and proceeded undisturbed with their unrealistically optimistic scenarios? Packer's book helps to unravel the mystery.

The greatest contribution of The Assassins' Gate lies in Packer's highly readable, intelligent chronicle of failure in the planning and management of post-Saddam Iraq, and the subsequent impact it had on the lives of ordinary Iraqis, American military personnel, and civilians working to clean up the mess. In time, military historians and strategists will study the early planning failures, the delay in recognizing and responding to the insurgency, and more generally the causes for failure to establish order after the collapse of Saddam's regime. In a less partisan environment, scholars will render a more studied judgment on whether more rigorous planning would have had a significant effect on security and reconstruction. Those more detailed, systematic, and analytical studies will no doubt round out Packer's account, but this is about as good a first draft of history as you can get.

The book has two parts. The second chronicles four trips Packer made to Iraq on assignment for The New Yorker. Through the eyes of Drew Erdman, a recently minted Harvard Ph.D. who became Iraq's de facto minister of education, we catch a glimpse of the chaos in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority led by Amb. L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, including the effects of his controversial policy of de-Baathification and the related decision to disband the Iraqi army. We get a glimpse of the early struggles on the ground through Packer's reportage on Capt. John Pryor, an army company commander admirably coming to grips with a burgeoning insurgency. We get a sense of the psychological damage and sociological pathologies wrought by Saddam's Baathist regime through the eyes of Dr. Baher Butti, the chief psychologist in a psychiatric hospital. And we get some wonderful insights into cultural and political intrigue from Packer's discussions with artists and professors at the Hiwar Gallery, a café in a hard-core Baathist district of Baghdad. Finally, I was particularly impressed by Packer's insightful reportage on the Sunni and Shia insurgencies (correctly plural), exposing the deeply tribal nature of much of Iraqi society, not least the continued effects of pre-modern notions of blood vengeance and honor killings. Officers and NCOs deploying or re-deploying to Iraq would do well to add Packer's chapters on "Occupied Iraqis," "Insurgencies," and "Civil War" to their pre-deployment reading list.

The range of the first part of the book, which details the central ideas and personalities behind Operation Iraqi Freedom, is equally impressive. Most important to Packer's story are his discussions with his longtime friend Kanan Makiya. The foremost intellectual among the Iraqi exiles, Makiya is best known for Republic of Fear, a seminal study of Saddam's Iraq that was first published anonymously to protect the author's life. Like Packer himself, Makiya is a man of the progressive Left, so his support for the U.S. invasion was particularly significant. Makiya personally assured President Bush that Iraqis would greet the troops with sweets and flowers. It was Makiya's progressive humanitarian vision of a liberal Iraq and his unvarnished portrait of oppression of Iraq under Saddam that persuaded Packer, and not a few other liberals, to support the war on humanitarian grounds. Packer also profiles neoconservative hawks such as Richard Perle and Robert Kagan, numerous State Department and Defense officials, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Those already inclined to accept the familiar narrative of the run-up to the war depicting a gullible and inept administration hoodwinked by a small cabal of neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals will find just enough in Packer's account to re-inforce their worst fears and expectations. Without a doubt, neoconservative intellectuals deserve a fair share, perhaps a majority share, of the blame for the overly optimistic assessment of what awaited the United States in post-Saddam Iraq. Particularly culpable are those such as Douglas Feith, who was directly responsible for reconstruction planning as the head of the Office of Special Plans.

Wolfowitz is subject to particular scrutiny. And yet, he comes off as more of a tragic and even sympathetic figure than the Darth Vader caricature of most progressive polemics:

Wolfowitz cared. For him Iraq was personal. He didn't seem driven by other agendas: Military transformation and shoring up the Likud Party and screwing the Democrats were not his obsessions. He wasn't a religious ideologue possessed by eschatological visions of remaking biblical lands. He was the closest thing to a liberal in the group. He had been pursuing this white whale for years, and he had everything to lose if Iraq went wrong. Why, then, did he find it all so hard to imagine?

Interestingly enough, Packer suggests that it was not Wolfowitz's ideological commitments but rather his instincts as a "bureaucratic survivor of many administrations" that led him to accept the terms of his boss Donald Rumsfeld: "light force, little commitment in the postwar." Which leads one to ask, "Why were those the terms?"

Indeed, while Packer's book should serve as a reality check for those on the Right who tend to downplay the neocons' responsibility for the problems of postwar Iraq, too much emphasis on the over-confidence of the neocons obscures an equally important reason for the problems in post-Saddam Iraq: the vision of warfare with which the Bush Administration came into office, and the concomitant understanding of how U.S. forces should be structured and transformed to fight future wars. In military jargon these are referred to as issues related to "force structure" and "military transformation." Packer discusses these issues, but because his book lacks a systematic structure the reader may come away with the impression that they were only of secondary importance.

The issues raised by the doctrine of military transformation and the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) are complex and not easily summarized. In brief, advocates of military transformation have been arguing for well over a decade that advances in information technology and radical improvements in long-range precision strike technology (e.g., smart bombs) have significantly changed the way wars will be fought. Included in this vision is a preference for lighter mobile ground forces, including special operations forces over larger conventional forces. Hence Secretary Rumsfeld's early goal of reducing the size of the active-duty army and the reserves by 20 percent to pay for his vision of transformation.

Some of the more radical advocates of military transformation argue that traditional notions of warfare are rapidly becoming obsolete. They claim, for example, that uncertainty in warfare has been so radically diminished by new and still-developing technology that talk about the "fog of war" is mostly hot air. While the extent to which Rumsfeld himself holds to the more radical version of the RMA is open to question, the Bush Administration, with Rumsfeld on point, clearly came to office with a firm commitment to military transformation.

And this explains, in turn, why President Bush ran for office with an explicit opposition to "peacekeeping" and "nation building" and "military operations other than war" (MOOTW, in military jargon) more generally. These types of military operations entail large personnel requirements and high costs, which place a drag on military transformation. Now, if you are planning to build a military that will have to deter and possibly fight the Chinese threat twenty years from now, this makes a certain amount of sense. But if you are talking about a long-term commitment to peacekeeping and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and elsewhere, that is another matter altogether. Packer cites Secretary of the Army Thomas White, who summarized the resistance to planning for a large-scale security and reconstruction effort: "The type of operation a stability operation is—troop presence, police presence, these mundane activities—that's not high tech, exotic, 'we're going to have satellites and Predators and hunt these guys down in the back roads of Yemen.' This is boots on the ground and it is very untransformational."

The administration's convictions on military transformation were clearly reinforced by the speed with which the Taliban was toppled in Afghanistan. In his December 2001 speech at the Citadel, President Bush declared,

Afghanistan has been a proving ground for this new approach. These past two months have shown that an innovative doctrine and high-tech weaponry can shape and then dominate an unconventional conflict… . The conflict in Afghanistan has taught us more about the future of our military than a decade of blue ribbon panels and think-tank symposiums.

The president concluded, "When all of our military can continuously locate and track moving targets—with surveillance from air and space—warfare will be truly revolutionized." Indeed, Rumsfeld and the advocates for transformation could legitimately claim that they were partially vindicated by the toppling of the Saddam regime and the fall of Baghdad with a relatively light force. Those who predicted massive slaughter in urban fighting were simply wrong.

It is important to note that the impact of transformation falls disproportionately on the Army. Not surprisingly, Army leadership has been the most resistant to transformation initiatives. It's likely that the civilian DOD leadership dismissed calls for a larger troop presence as merely another bureaucratic attempt to stall the administration on military transformation—a suspicion with considerable credibility. After all, the Army tends to be no more enthusiastic about "constabulatory" missions and counterinsurgency missions than are the advocates of transformation. I suspect that skepticism regarding the Army's response led to the fateful decision to place responsibility for post-Saddam security and reconstruction outside the normal Pentagon bureaucracy, in the hands of the civilians in the Office of Special Plans, headed by Douglas Feith.

In short, the DOD bears the primary responsibility for the failures in postwar Iraq. But Packer is fair enough in his coverage to show that there's plenty of blame to be spread around. One anecdote in particular serves to exemplify the petty infighting that hampered the postwar effort. A State Department official tells Packer that shortly after Jerry Bremer was tasked to head the Coalition Provisional Authority, Colin Powell told a staff meeting, "We have one priority. That priority is Iraq. What Jerry Bremer asks for, Jerry Bremer gets and he gets it today. Any questions?" And yet, this official said, the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the enemy of the neoconservatives, essentially said:

"Okay, you don't want us—f___ you." And then from there on out it was, "Let's see what impediments we can put in their way. Let's see how long we can be in delivering this particular commodity or individual or amount of expertise. Let's see how long we can stiff 'em."

So, the neocons in the DOD failed to plan adequately for the reconstruction and the counter-insurgency; the Army was perceived as lobbying for a larger invasion force at least partly out of institutional self-interest; and the State Department's experts were throwing a temper-tantrum. No wonder things turned out the way they did.

So what are the lessons learned? First, neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals ought to take a step back and review an elementary lesson in political theory: order is necessary before liberty can flourish. The easy way would be to learn it from Hobbes or Burke. Iraq is re-teaching the lesson the hard way.
The second lesson is from military historian and strategist Frederick Kagan, who rightly insists that advocates of military transformation have forgotten the Clausewitzian dictum. As Kagan observes, a warfighting strategy is more than just a "targeting drill," and the manner of fighting a war can't be detached from the broader political objective:

From the standpoint of establishing a good peace it matters a great deal how, exactly, one defeats the enemy and what the enemy's country looks like at the moment the bullets stop flying. The U.S. has developed and implemented a method of warfare that can produce stunning military victories but does not necessarily accomplish the political goals for which the war was fought.

Fortunately, the Bush Administration appears to be recognizing this, if only belatedly. A DOD directive issued in early December acknowledges that "stability operations are a core U.S. military mission" deserving of "priority comparable to combat missions."

Finally, a word ought to be said about the scope of the early planning failures and mistakes in Iraq. Some commentators have downplayed the missteps by suggesting that they pale in comparison to other military blunders in American history. And indeed, when compared to the slaughter of Marines at Tarawa, the failure to detect and prepare for the German counteroffensive which resulted in the Battle of the Bulge, and the innumerable screwups on D-Day—to limit examples to World War II—the failures in Iraq don't look so egregious. But what if the Bush Administration and others who have been broadly supportive of the war, such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, are correct—as I believe they are—in warning that failure in Iraq would be catastrophic for both the broader war on Islamic extremism and for a vision of a more just and peaceful Middle East? In that case, if the U.S. intervention is ultimately unsuccessful, these early failures will be magnified, and the military and civilian architects of the war will be judged harshly indeed. If, on the other hand, order and representative government eventually come to Iraq, we may be left with Packer's assessment that those in positions of highest responsibility for Iraq "turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one." Which is bad enough.

Keith J. Pavlischek is a colonel in the U.S. Marines. A reservist, he has served on active duty since being mobilized after 9/11, including a recent stint in Iraq.

My own position - that at best the war can be characterized as an unjust mistake (convicting and executing a bad person for a crime he did not commit is an analogue I have suggested)... - has never been all that popular with much of anybody.

Zippy, unpopularity notwithstanding, I actually agree with you as far as I can tell. Count me among the unpopular..

Yet to clarify, while I think everyone can agree that a person is causally responsible for an unjust mistake, would you say a person is morally culpable for an unjust mistake? Or is it possible for an injustice not to have a culpable source?

Hmm.. I read the Wikipedia article on The One Percent Doctrine and I didn't find anything to suggest the Bush administration had knowingly set aside just war criteria. Did you think the one percent doctrine itself somehow violated just war criteria?

Did you think the one percent doctrine itself somehow violated just war criteria?

Absolutely. The One Percent Doctrine definitely violates the just war criteria.

The JWD requires lasting, grave, and certain damage by the aggressor nation. Whatever understanding of "certain" that implies, a 1% chance is not certainty under any reasonable understanding of certainty.

I talked about this a lot at the time. The basic move is to make gravity substitute for certainty: basically, if the consequences are grave enough (US cities disappearing in mushroom clouds) that acts as a substitute for certainty in evaluating the threat and (attempting to) justify going to war.

In fact, though, gravity and certainty are independent criteria which have to be met separately.

I think folks distorted their thinking on just war because of the gravity of the perceived threat. But to adopt the One Percent Doctrine is to adopt an unjust war doctrine. This pertains directly to William Luse's comment: when certainty (under at least some reasonable understanding of certainty) is morally required, and yet very clearly is not present, that is a moral violation.

A lot of folks, including me, were conditionally supportive of the administration before and in the early part of the war. I don't have access to everything to which the President has access. But if he was certain that Saddam Hussein was actively developing nuclear weapons and also was developing an al Qaeda relationship as a means to deliver those nuclear weapons to US targets, that would indeed have justified going to war, in my view. It turns out that he wasn't certain, under any reasonable understanding of certainty: that the whole thing was based on this "one percent doctrine" notion that the gravity of threatened damage can substitute for certainty in justifying war.

So at best it was an unjust mistake; more likely it was culpably unjust, even while fully acknowledging that it was motivated by a genuine desire to protect the American people.

A few random thought on a debate growing long in tooth, and going nowhere.
There were manifold reasons for attacking Iraq, not just WMD's, which and not without justification, was used to move a viciously corrupt UN to a semblance of action.

The financial support given to suicide bombers and their families against Israel.
The extermination of tens of thousands of dissidents and Kurds.
Saddams record of commencing wars, mayhap a pointer for the diligent as to his future activities after 9/11 were we to go the police action route.
The war resolution which inconveniently mentioned rogue states that support terror.
And the WMD's, which honors graduates of the University of Second Guessing wisely saw as a bellicose ruse, -- but which nobody, nowhere saw as such at the time. Wonder why?

As I've observed many times, though, those reasons only morally justify the decision to go to war absent the WMD/AQ nexis if in fact we as a nation would have gone to war absent the WMD/AQ reason. I think it is manifestly clear that we would not have done so. The difference between illegitimately rationalizing and legitimately justifying is precisely that when rationalizing we give putative reasons which were not in fact sufficient to get us to actually act.

For other reasons to legitimately pertain it would have to be true that we as a nation would have gone to war just at that time and in that manner if the subject of WMD's and an AQ connection had never come up at all. I suppose people can make up their own minds about that, but to me the answer is obvious.

Col Pavlischek, thanks for posting your article, it was an excellent read. I'd also recommend reading Cobra II by Gen. Trainor if you haven't already. It has quite a lot of detail on the disastrous planning prior to the war, and a fair bit to say about the terrible Transformation-driven planning assumptions that drove OSD's pressure on CENTCOM to keep the invasion force small.

I believe that the ideas and sentiments that underpin Transformation and RMA are very deeply embedded in American culture and this is not the first nor last we've seen of this. I think we culturally have a predilection to viewing most problems as solvable by the application of gadgets, with insoluable problems merely awaiting the development of new technologies. It warps and distorts of view of the world and guarantees blunders, and seduces us with promises of easy victories, where American blood won't have to be shed, because the airplanes and smart bombs and satellites will do it all for us (and as a bonus, bring home lots of Defense patronage to congressional districts to develop the expensive weapons). It has been with us a long time - what else explains the baleful influence of the USAF on US strategy since 1947?

I think in general this is how culture approaches problems, we see merely its military application here. One would expect it to be discredited after Iraq, but think again. The main strategy underpinning Transformation, Effects Based Operations (EBO), after having been banished by JFCOM Cdr Gen. Mattis, is working to make a come back under a different acronym.

You're right that Ricks' words as spoken are foolish and strain moral logic. So I guess he qualifies for the award for worst argument.

But the historical record simply doesn't support your view of an "honest mistake" when it comes to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Good, mainstream reporting by the Wall St. Journal, the Washington Post and other media demonstrate the eagerness of the Bush administration well before 9/11 to remove Hussein from power. Even though, in the first few hours after the attacks, the CIA concluded that it was "virtually certain" that Bin Laden was the culprit, not Iraq or other states (Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, "America's Chaotic Road to War -- Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Hours After Attack," Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2002), that intelligence was actively, purposefully downplayed or ignored. In fact, notes taken by an aide at the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 quote Rummy as saying, "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related or not." Things related or not!!! http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml

And thus started a long propaganda campaign to link in the American mind Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

There's also been good reporting suggesting that the forged "yellowcake" documents from Niger (which were used to demonstrate Saddam's supposed nuclear plans and capabilities) likely came from the Italy, as a gift and encouragement for U.S. moves to dump Sikorsky and go with an Italian military contractor for a fleet of Marine One presidential choppers. (good summary here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-klein-and-paolo-pontoniere/helicopters-cover-ups-and_b_167568.html) This reporting, admittedly, is a little more tenuous.

At best, Bush and co. were swept up in "willful ignorance." At worst, they used a horrible attack on America by Al Qaeda and scant, dubious "evidence" (remember Powell's pathetic "mobile bioweapons labs"?), some of it concocted, of WMD in Iraq to push forward an aggressive foreign policy.

Zippy, the thing is, I'm not sure that the 1% doctrine was applied for every military decision made.

What I mean is that the injustice of the 1% doctrine depends critically on the specific decision being made. A war decision, in the face of a "low probability-high impact" event, to stock up on ammunition or send naval groups to the Pacific obviously does not qualify as unjust. A decision to bomb a country would qualify as unjust. But the Wikipedia entry didn't actually list any specific decisions that were made, so to be fair to Mr. Pavlischek whom you directed to the Wikipedia entry, there no evidence there with which to accuse the U.S. of injustice.

Since I won't, realistically, read the book, I'll believe you if you say it cites some evidence that the Bush administration made the decision to go to war in Iraq based on a 1% chance of whatever condition being met, but the 1% doctrine is not necessarily unjust.

Obviously, as a criteria for deciding to go to war, the one percent doctrine is unjust. It is pretty clear that the Administration - which again, has access to many things that I do not have access to and, to get positively Rumsfeldian, very much knew what it did not know - did not in fact possess certainty, in any reasonable sense of the term, that an Iraq/AQ nuclear nexis existed. My evidence for that fact - evidence which is available to everyone now, though as "men on the street" we had no way of knowing then - is that there in fact was not an Iraq/AQ nuclear nexis.

Keith,
I want to say I admire the fact that you were and are willing to take constructive criticism about the major fiasco of postwar planning. That said, there are still nagging problems surrounding the initiation of the war highlighted in the infamous Downing Street memo. Whatever their culpability for starting the war, it should have been an imperative for American leaders after realizing the Pandora's box they had opened to try everything realistically possible to fix the mess. Instead they gave us happy talk for years about tipping points, and in some cases told us it was part of the patently unjust flypaper strategy. That doesn't begin to cut it for a just war, it cannot be used as a vehicle for a different, unjust objective.

John,
Although they should have never ignored everything reported by Curveball and his sponsor Chalabi, without actually going in to look at the trailers it was impossible to tell from photos what those labs were capable of. So on that score I am willing to cut the Bush administration a little slack.http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/bw-mobile.htm

Zippy, the fact that we know now that no such nexis existed does not mean the Bush administration were not certain at the time that it did exist. I'm certain I'm married to Jane Doe. If I learn later that I married a previously unknown identical twin, I would no longer be certain I married Jane Doe. But obviously at the time of marriage I was certain...

In other words, "certainty" does not rest on truth. "Accuracy/correctness" rests on truth, and one does not require the other.

Col Pavlischek, thanks for posting your article, it was an excellent read. I'd also recommend reading Cobra II by Gen. Trainor if you haven't already. It has quite a lot of detail on the disastrous planning prior to the war, and a fair bit to say about the terrible Transformation-driven planning assumptions that drove OSD's pressure on CENTCOM to keep the invasion force small.

I have not read it. I probably should, but I lived the disastor and it is not good for my blood pressure. Best book I've read recently on Iraq is BING WEST'S THE STRONGEST TRIBE.

I believe that the ideas and sentiments that underpin Transformation and RMA are very deeply embedded in American culture and this is not the first nor last we've seen of this.

In addition to the cultural reasons you mention, I suggest that there may be is a misplaced ethical concern or percpetion that there is something "dirty" about irregular warfare. I try to address those concerns.

I think in general this is how culture approaches problems, we see merely its military application here. One would expect it to be discredited after Iraq, but think again. The main strategy underpinning Transformation, Effects Based Operations (EBO), after having been banished by JFCOM Cdr Gen. Mattis, is working to make a come back under a different acronym.

I haven't followed this stuff since I retired (07) but this is discouraging.

Finally, I'm very much disinclined to rehearse arguments about just war and OIF, but here goes. The reason we believed Saddam had WMDs was that he WANTED us to believe he had WMDs. His own senior generals believed they had WMDs. Saddam was running an effective propoganda campaign not only against us, but his own military, for goodness sake. He wanted us to believe he had WMD's not merely to deter us but, more crucially, to deter and threaten Iran. So, I'm not at all inclined to believe that any US decision maker or legislator was "culpable" for believing him. How can you be culpable if the Intelligence Community is telling you that he has them, that your senior intell guy--a Clinton appointment and holdover-- is telling you it is a "slam dunk." THAT and not monday-morning punditry is what you have to go on--in the arena, as it were, not in the faculty lounge. So, pin the blame on the IC, pin it on the failure to have detailed HUMINT on the WMD program, pin it on a feckless DCI, but don't blame it on the decision makers. you can blame the failure to plan for Phase IV on the decision makers--military and civilian-- but not that.

final point--I believe a very compelling argument can be made that we were in a state of bellum with Iraq since the end of Desert Storm. If that is the case, then the burden of proof to comply with the inspections regime shifts radically onto Iraq to prove its compliance and to prove it did NOT have WMDs. That was the deal in 1991. That, coupled with the (perceived) gravity of the threat, the demand that 9/11 not happen again, that we have to "connect the dots" leads me to believe we had just cause to take the guy down. As I mentioned very briefly in my piece on Ricks at FT, that is why the concept of "preemption" with regard to Iraq is a red hearing.

"And thus started a long propaganda campaign to link in the American mind Saddam Hussein and 9/11."

Is it too early to nominate this statement for the next Stove Award?

What's that? The "Stovey" only goes to incredibly stupid arguments, and does not apply to statements that are simply huge, malignant lies? But, but - this one was created by the far-Left propaganda machine, spread by the mass media, and nevertheless was swallowed whole by some people who consider themselves to be conservatives! That's a fairly rare achievement, isn't it? Seems like SOME kind of award should be in order....

In any event, here's how the statement should read:

"And thus started a long propaganda campaign to create in the American mind the impression that the Bush Administration had linked Saddam Hussein and 9/11."

Zippy, I'm glad you hedged a bit in your response to me. It takes a bold man to speak for the nation, though the passage of a few years does provide a little leeway.
My post addresses justification, which question the unctuous Mr Ricks raised. I should be praised for not dragging in a Catholic saint for support, and I do hope the NY Times doesn't hold that against Ricks.

On the political side of the question, as above, we disagree on what the nation may or may not have done, but I've always held myself a modest man.

Ricks is right. One can be held morally responsible for an action even if one is unaware that ones grounding beliefs are false, given that they COULD have known that their grounding beliefs are false had they subjected themselves to appropriate rational scrutiny. This is the case with the Iraq war. Given an appropriate level of scrutiny (e.g. of intelligence sources), President Bush could have realized that his false beliefs were in fact false beliefs. He's thus culpable for his action based on false beliefs. We know that President Bush could have realized that his false beliefs were in fact false because some people actually DID at the time realize that his beliefs about Curveball were false. And what is actual is possible.

The difference between the President Bush case and the homeless Iraq war vet case, is that the person who gives the vet money, arguably could not have known his belief (that the person will spend the money wisely) to be false.

I won't accuse Mr. Fesner of being a bad philosopher, just not a very careful one!

Given an appropriate level of scrutiny (e.g. of intelligence sources), President Bush could have realized that his false beliefs were in fact false beliefs. He's thus culpable for his action based on false beliefs. We know that President Bush could have realized that his false beliefs were in fact false because some people actually DID at the time realize that his beliefs about Curveball were false. And what is actual is possible.

This comment betrays a remarkable ignorance about the way the intelligence community actually works--the way it collects information analyses it and the way it is delivered to decision makers. OF COURSE, on any given issue there will be minority and dissenting interpretations on how to understand the raw data, on the reliability of the respective sources (of which curveball was merely one) etc. Intell collection, analysis and dissemination are an art, not a science. (And the simple fact is that the HUMINT collection piece of the puzzle was and remains in disarray.) What your comment seems to imply is that regardless of the proximity and the gravity of a potential threat, a decision-maker when contemplating the use of force or other policy decision is ALWAYS BOUND to go with the minority or dissenting analysis rather than the majority opinion because "some people believe the majority opinion" to be false. This is very odd! Would you require apodictic certainty to act?

And thus started a long propaganda campaign to create in the American mind the impression that the Bush Administration had linked Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

If polling is any indicator of the American mind, the percentage who connected Saddam to 9/11 days after the attack was 4%, in the weeks before the invasion was 45%, and reached 70% six months after the war started. What the administration did was mention 9/11 in the same breath as Saddam every chance they got, made a very strong connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda (which was a troubled alliance from the start and according to credible sources severed in 1999), and when asked directly about a link would shrug and say, "I don't know, but we have all these other suspicious things." In effect they connected the dots except for the last one.

"What your comment seems to imply is that regardless of the proximity and the gravity of a potential threat, a decision-maker when contemplating the use of force or other policy decision is ALWAYS BOUND to go with the minority or dissenting analysis rather than the majority opinion ."

I'm not sure if you're aware of the rules of quantification, but my position only requires that a decision maker SOMETIMES go with the dissenting analysis.

I think we need to remember as well that the administration was pushing both things that some in the intelligence community falsely believed, and things which were not substantiated at all. For example, the intelligence community had at least some reason to believe that Saddam had WMDs (since we gave them to him!), but there was no evidence that Saddam was tied to 9/11, that Saddam had acquired the kind of aluminum tubes which allow for uranium enrichment, or the declaration that mobile weapons labs were actually found in Iraq.

But what is really shocking is that a natural law theorist would endorse a war not only based on false intelligence, but one which was intended to establish a democratic government in the Middle East (when the hell was that ever an appropriate end for military action) as well as the endorsement of "preventative war" (read: non-immanent hypothetical threat). Aside from all the silliness about matters on the ground, the premises that the war was waged on was one which explicitly rejects tenets of just war theory. To quote Bush: "if we wait for the threat to materialize, we have waited too long." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine#Preventive_strikes

I normally enjoy your blog, and hope this is a momentary lapse--philosophers are notorious for getting political issues wrong, after all.

What lapse? Are you saying that Ricks' argument (the specific one I cited) is a good one? 'Cause that's the only thing I was talking about -- not the justice of the Iraq war, not Bush, not democracy in the Middle East, not anything else.

Are you aware of the rules of quantification? Because the universal claim Keith attributes to you is what you'd have to be committed to in order to make your case. You want to infer from:

1. There were dissenting analyses (e.g. vis-a-vis Curveball).

and

2. Bush did not listen to the dissenters.

to

3. Bush is culpable for not knowing better.

But your suggested additional premise:

4. A decision maker should SOMETIMES go with the dissenting analysis.

will not get you from 1 and 2 to 3, while

5. A decision maker should ALWAYS go with the dissenting analysis.

would get you from 1 and 2 to 3. That is, obviously, why Keith attributed 5 to you. Since you're such a "careful philosopher" (and indeed an expert on quantification too, apparently) I'm surprised you missed his point.

On that score, re:

Apparently the careless philosopher in question is a Mr. Feser, not Fesner. How appropriate. In the context of this argument (and only this argument) that would make him Edward "The Con" Feser.

I suppose that's some sort of insult. But I admit that I'm not sure, since I can't even figure out what the hell it means.

...the fact that we know now that no such nexis existed does not mean the Bush administration were not certain at the time that it did exist.

It is entirely possible that various people gave little speeches to themselves and convinced themselves of the existence of an AQ/Nuke nexis. That kind of subjective quasi-certainty isn't particularly interesting to me, since it pertains to the person's ultimate individual judgment before God, which isn't any of my business. Here in the real world, though, as distinct from subjective delusion capable of morally trumping any objective state of affairs or concrete actions, nobody was certain that there was an AQ/nuke nexis in Iraq. We know for a fact that nobody was certain of such a thing in the pertinent sense, because there most definitely was not in fact such a thing.

I am more than willing to allow people to be judged for their subjective delusions before God. I am not willing to allow our discourse to be perverted by subjectivism to such an extent that we remain forever suspended in a state of unknowing: where it becomes impossible, by appeal to some inner speeches people tell themselves about their own subjective certainty, to determine whether someone was in fact certain about a thing claimed. The claim was that a Nuclear/AQ nexis existed as a lasting and grave threat; absent that claim, the nation would not have in fact gone to war; absent certainty in that claim, it could not justify going to war, period.

So again, the best anyone can lay claim to is an unjust - unjust in every objectively pertinent sense, leaving aside completely private and subjective delusion - mistake.

Let me put it this way. If someone claims that he doesn't believe that an unborn fetus is a human being, and therefore it is perfectly just for him to perform an abortion, I say poppycock. It may well be the case that he is deluded, and his delusion may in fact make a difference when he is judged before God. But I don't care. I will not pronounce "just" his concrete act in the world, an act of killing a child, simply because he might putatively suffer from a subjective delusion, or because he might disagree that what he did was wrong. Radical subjectivism can, and ultimately will, go straight to Hell.

Mr. Feser, you're muddying the waters by conveniently framing the Iraq debate as one between minority and majority opinion, rather than good and bad intelligence. The minority intelligence in this case was the good intelligence, and this was knowable at the time, not just because some people held that it was good intelligence, but because that is the way an impartial, third party observer, with no preconceived agenda to invade a country, would have decided.

Ed, I think the issue is a just a little more complicated than you've suggested.

It's not uncommon to distinguish faultless wrongdoing from culpable wrongdoing and there is serious debate as to whether we ought to classify cases of ignorance/mistaken belief as cases of excusable wrongdoing rather than, say, right but unfortunate action. (For arguments that suggest that mistaken beliefs/ignorance provide excuses rather than obviate the need for justifications, see Paul Robinson, John Gardner, Judith Thomson, Barbara Herman.) Those who draw this distinction and argue that cases of ignorance/mistaken belief would say that it is misleading at best to say that the agents that engage in wrongdoing are "guilty" without adding that they oughtn't be faulted for the breach. Of course, upon discovering after the fact that they had committed the breach they can be faulted for failing to act on what Barbara Herman refers to as "maxims of response". I guess I don't see that you're clearly distinguishing permissibility from culpability and so I guess I'd say that your example shows something Ricks wouldn't have to deny--that when you act on non-culpably held mistaken beliefs you can't be blamed for your actions. I don't see what basis that gives us for saying that it's not the case that you shouldn't have acted otherwise. It's that claim that needs to be established to show that there's been no wrong committed. What's wrong with saying that Ricks in your example:
(a) couldn't have known better and so oughtn't be blamed;
(b) brought about a very bad state of affairs that he oughtn't have brought about;
(c) has special responsibilities to the vet in the wake of all this that we don't.

If (c) is true, it seems that he has reasons to try to help the vet now in jail that those of us unconnected to the case do not and those reasons would presumably be agent relative reasons that arise because of the role he played in bringing about the bad state of affairs. These reasons, it seems, would be reasons to discharge a reparative duty. But, reparative duties are responses to past wrongs and so we have some evidence for (b), a claim which is perfectly consistent with (a).

"The minority intelligence in this case was the good intelligence, and this was knowable at the time, not just because some people held that it was good intelligence, but because that is the way an impartial, third party observer, with no preconceived agenda to invade a country, would have decided."

If polling is any indicator of the American mind, the percentage who connected Saddam to 9/11 days after the attack was 4%, in the weeks before the invasion was 45%, and reached 70% six months after the war started.

How interesting. I have never been able to comprehend this "statistic." I, personally, never thought there was any basis for believing in such a connection. I never thought that this possibility was intentionally advanced as a realistic probability. Nor did I ever think that I "saw through" someone's argument on the subject, or reporting on it, or depiction of "what everyone naturally believes" - I never thought that "while the great masses might be taken in by such a notion, I know better." So I simply cannot come up with a reason why those supposed 4%, or 45%, or 70% would have thought that Saddam was connected to 9-11. Which leads me to another option: Maybe polling didn't have anything to do with what Americans really thought about the matter. Or rather, maybe the reporting about the polls didn't have anything to do with the American mind.

Let's do a small poll: Step2, and Zippy, and Keith, and Gadfly, and Ed, and JohnT, and Thomas: did YOU believe in the nexus in Feb 2003? If so, why? If not, why not?

I didn't see, or may have missed, the name of Hans Blix anywhere in this bewildering maze of A's, B's, and C's. with some 1's 2's,& 3's thrown in for increased but useless attempts at sophistication, while taking side trips down A-bomb lane and divorcing Saddam from the all too broad issue of terrorism and his proven links to that phenomenon.
Speaking of whom, and I digress myself, the NY Times rage at his execution was priceless, no?

Back to Blix and to keep it short; when Blix returned to the USA about two weeks before the "unjustified" war began he said that he didn't know if his field teams would find evidence of wmd's. Now for the A,B,&C, crowd that is a much different statement than saying they didn't exist and/or never did. But the A,B,& C's will say lack of evidence proves non-existence of that which is claimed. Indicates maybe, proves no, it's a door left open.

We now turn to the Dulfer report,[assuming I've spelled that name right]. Dulfer did a op ed piece in which he stated his teams had found evidence of small but ongoing wmd programs, both for nerve gas and riacin. and that these programs were running up to the time of the "unjustified" invasion. Make of that what you will but do make something of it. He also said he did not recognize his report from the media coverage of it. Surprise !!

But why wmd's as an issue in the first place when given Saddam's overt, known support for terrorism, as well as his proclivities for same, there was ample reason post 9/11 to respond militarily in a war that was thrust upon us?

The answer lies in the bestiary located in NYC on the East river. It lies further in the strange idea that something called "the World" must agree with us. And so hat in hand we pleaded with some of that world's most reprehensible lowlifes for their tainted approval and used an issue that was perfectly justified in it's use and in concert with other issues & reasons made such pleadings almost superfluous.

Ricks attempts to create a moral position where there is none. In war you act with the intelligence you have. To isolate one particular reason from the others and to do so with a cheap use of hindsight is a weak and dishonest way of claiming a moral position. But it may be the only way to salvage one's pride in a situation where you ached for your nation's defeat but were denied that sweet nectar.
On to Afghanistan, were once, and in about two weeks, we were caught in a quagmire. But some things have changed haven't they?

I agree with all that. But it seems better directed at Ricks, not at me, since he fails to make any such distinctions in his exchange with Pavlischek. What was at issue between them was whether the people who authorized the war acted in accordance with just war theory at the time they made their decision. (Pavlischek explicitly mentions the "Bush lied, people died" mantra as conveying the sort of attitude he is criticizing.) And it is to this issue (and specifically to the post where Pavlischek made the point that given what they knew at the time they can't be blamed) that Ricks directed the remarks quoted above. He doesn't say "Yes, they can't be blamed, but they still have special responsibilities." He instead says, or certainly implies, that the fact that they turned out to be wrong somehow shows (retroactively?) that they were never really acting in accordance with just war theory.

It is true that this is such a stupid thing to say that it would in most cases be hard to believe an intelligent person could really have meant it, but as I say, the context makes that reading hard to avoid. My theory is that in a pique Ricks wrote and posted it "drive-by" style without thinking.

While my vote was not solicited, I'll throw it in anyway. When the war was started, I was wholeheartedly opposed to it as an unjust war. I doubted Iraq's nuclear capability (along with the aforementioned Mr. Blix) and wasn't terribly afraid of any ricin factories they may have had. If Condoleezza Rice thought ricin factories were a good reason to invade Iraq, she ought not have spoken of mushroom clouds over our cities. I am personally convinced that our government deliberately deceived us in an attempt to garner support for a war they knew was unjust. I can't prove it absolutely, but that's the way it seemed to me at the time, and that's the way I see it today.

But even if Iraq had had nuclear capabilities, that alone would not have convinced me that a bloody invasion was justified. If nuclear capability is the only test of "lasting, grave, and certain" damage, then we have (at least partial) just cause for war against at least nine other nations already. Certainly, nuclear attacks can rightly be considered grave damage, but the possession of a nuke does not make such damage certain any more than my possession of a revolver makes it certain that I will shoot my neighbors.

As for the other elements of the just war doctrine, I am not at all convinced (neither was I at the time) that conditions 2 (that all other means of ending the aggression- if indeed Hussein was an aggressor against the US- had been shown impractical or ineffective) and 4 (that the use of arms must not create greater evils than the evil to be eliminated) were met. After reading Mr. Pavlischek's article, I am starting to have my doubts about the third condition as well.

In the end, I suppose all four elements of the doctrine are subject to interpretation and disagreement. Still, my impression persists that concern for human life was not the primary consideration of the people who ordered the invasion.

If nuclear capability is the only test of "lasting, grave, and certain" damage, then we have (at least partial) just cause for war against at least nine other nations already. Certainly, nuclear attacks can rightly be considered grave damage, but the possession of a nuke does not make such damage certain any more than my possession of a revolver makes it certain that I will shoot my neighbors.

This is true. But that was not the whole of the reason.

Saddam DID shoot his neighbors, in two aggressive wars. And threatened to shoot us if he could. And it took considerable effort from us in 1991 to undo the second of those wars. That war stopped in a cease-fire, under which we agreed not to invade Baghdad in return for certain guarantees for not merely no more overt acts of aggression, but removing the capacity - including Saddam's obligation to prove he was getting rid of his chemical weapons and other WMD capacity. Saddam repeatedly broke this agreement, first by shooting at our jets (in fact there never was a protracted period of no Iraqi war acts at all) then by refusing to allow weapons inspectors access, then by using the "oil-for-food" program for weapons and other purposes.

With any normal understanding of an agreement, if you violate your part, I don't have to live up to my part. The US had every right to resume the hotter aspect of the 1991 war throughout the 1990s into 2000s. As my credit card company says: the fact that they don't immediately retract my low introductory rate if I miss one payment does not imply they don't retain the right to do so at any time. The fact that we exercised restraint several times does not create any obligation on us to continue doing so until yet ANOTHER, even MORE egregious violation. As a matter of having just cause, if the 1991 war had just cause, then certainly the 2003 war did too. Since it seems to me that it is virtually self-evident that there was just cause for the 1991 war, the conclusion is obvious. Of course that is only 1 of the 4 requirements for a war to be a just war.

I respect that JPII did not think we should not have fought in the 1991 war. I don't recall his specific reasons in his own words, but my poor recollection is that his primary focus was on making more efforts for peaceful measures, instead of resorting to war so "quickly" - that we had not exhausted peaceful means. About this I have 2 things to say. First, this pre-requisite for just war must be understood in a reasonable context. The amount of time allocated for trying peaceful means depends on circumstances, it is not an absolute period of time. During our 4-month build-up, Saddam had been busy raping the entire country of Kuwait. Tell a rape victim: "we are negotiating, just be patient." There is a fairly reasonable basis for saying 4 months WAS a long enough time, given his continuing efforts to solidify his capacity to stay, and his destruction of the defeated people.

Secondly, given the later complete failure of economic sanctions and the cease-fire agreement after the war, it is NOW clear that Saddam had no intention of negotiating in good faith, or of following any desires but his own. This is, admittedly, after the fact, but it is NOW recognizable fact that spending more time would not have helped negotiate a peaceful, just resolution. If the objectors to the 2003 war can say we now know there were only a small amount of WMD and this affects the justice of the war, then by the same reasoning this can be used to show that in 1991 we applied as much time as was reasonable.

I may have doubts about the other 2 requirements for just war, but I don't see a basis for grave doubts about these requirements.

Billy,
That is a fair point. Of the friends I have who were initially gung-ho about the war, only one maintained the Saddam-9/11 link when pressed about it. The rest were convinced that Saddam wanted revenge but they would grudgingly admit he wasn't responsible for 9/11. So if the polling was simple or vague they could easily have gotten a higher response solely from the certitude people had that Saddam intended to commit terror attacks. Nevertheless it is apparent that the Bush administration did plenty to reinforce the link in the ways I described previously.

Maybe Zippy is right that an honest accounting of what we knew at the time and a sober assessment of the risks involved would have led to a decision to maintain the status quo. I tend to think the war still would have happened, but if we had gone to war under those conditions it would have improved the moral dimension. The public deserved a carefully balanced picture instead of the confusing distortion that was presented. A war in that case could still have failed to meet all the just war criteria, but it would have likely met significantly more of them. It also would have avoided the spectacle of Tenet, who is reported to have unequivocally endorsed the WMD rationale, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. How is that supposed to make sense, he gives grossly inaccurate information to justify a war and then gets rewarded for it?

"The minority intelligence in this case was the good intelligence, and this was knowable at the time, not just because some people held that it was good intelligence, but because that is the way an impartial, third party observer, with no preconceived agenda to invade a country, would have decided."

Gadfly, this is more or less the precise opposite of what every associate if mine with access to any part of that intelligence has said (including the ones who opposed the war for other reasons). To a man, they believed that Saddam was doing exactly what successive administrations concluded he was doing. It stuns me that anyone would claim to have knowledge of what "any impartial observer" would decide based on intelligence he has not seen. Or, if he has seen it, that his TS/SCI clearance would mean so little to him that he would spout off about it on a weblog comment box.

I neither believed nor disbelieved in it. As I said already, I conditionally supported the war in 2003 - the condition being that the President did in fact know of such a nexis, that is, of active Iraqi nuclear programs and plans to deliver and detonate nukes on US soil via al Qaeda terrorists.

Sleeping Beastly wrote:

But even if Iraq had had nuclear capabilities, that alone would not have convinced me that a bloody invasion was justified.

I absolutely agree. There would also need to be certainty (under at least some reasonable and objective understanding of certainty, and not under some radically subjectivist trump card the function of which is to simply end discussion) that Hussein was planning to deliver those nukes to US soil and detonate them via a cultivated AQ connection.

But that [the putative threat of AQ delivering Hussein-built nukes to US soil] was not the whole of the reason [for the 2003 invasion].

What matters though is not all the different reasons that all sorts of people ever talked about or thought about or even wrote down in formal documents. What matters is what reasons were actually sufficient to actually mobilize us for war. So for example the theory that this was justified as a continuance of 1991 is a complete non-starter, for the simple reason that it was not in fact a continuance of 1991. If it were justified as a continuance of 1991 it would have to at least be the case (as a necessary but not sufficient condition) that we would have invaded Iraq in 2003 in pretty much just the manner we actually did invade Iraq even if 9-11 had never happened. I think that is pretty obviously not the case though.

Billy,
I am not at all convinced that the '91 war was justified, but I haven't done enough research on it to have a terribly solid opinion. Perhaps I would feel differently if I'd had relatives in Kuwait at the time.

As for Hussein attacking his neighbors and threatening the US, I won't get into the war with Iran. (That's a whole other discussion.) But I will say that not every threat is worth responding to with deadly force, especially when such threats have very little substance, and thousands of innocents stand in the line of fire.

Your argument that a breach of agreement by one party relieves the other of any responsibilities may actually qualify for a Stover award of its own. By that logic, one act of adultery by a wife justifies another by her husband. Whatever Hussein may have done, we are still bound by the moral law. Whether or not he was breaking the terms of the ceasefire, a just nation is still obligated to make military decisions with an eye toward minimizing bloodshed.

Finally, you are correct that time is of the essence when people are dying. (Hence the words "impractical or ineffectual" in the second condition.) But where was the hurry in the 2003 invasion? It's all very well to talk of the rape of Kuwait, but it's not pertinent to the invasion we were discussing. The hurry we were presented with by our leaders was the threat of mushroom clouds over our cities, which is partly why I feel that most of us were tricked into approving of a war we would normally have opposed.

Your argument that a breach of agreement by one party relieves the other of any responsibilities may actually qualify for a Stover award of its own. By that logic, one act of adultery by a wife justifies another by her husband.

I said nothing of the sort. I said that normally breach of contract by one party means the other party ceases to be bound to fulfill their part of that contract. If you don't pay me as we agreed, I don't deliver the goods as agreed. It does not release from all other obligations. In any case, marriage is a covenant as well as a contract, and that differs in structure.

In general terms, if a war is entered into and fought justly, and then open violence is brought to a stopping point through a negotiated cease-fire, and if one party systematically violates that agreement, the other party does not need additional causus belli to return to using force. Whatever the initial cause was for the initial going to war, that along with direct defiance of international agreement intended to stop the warfare, is sufficient cause for renewing the use of force. Any other conclusion would make it impossible to actually enforce an international agreement for concluding a war (short of total destruction) on an unwilling party. Which would make it pointless to even attempt to enter such agreements.

It is not necessary that there be a single instance of defiance that of itself constitutes a sufficient just cause for war. A systematic refusal to submit in reality to the terms of the agreement is sufficient to return the parties to their pre-agreement state of affairs, and this includes the option for open "hot" war. There may be other considerations leading to a conclusion that now is not a good time for renewing open hostilities, but those would be in separate from the question of whether there is a just cause for war.

Nick,
Your point is taken, as well as someone of my temperament can take it.

Billy,
My apologies for the "Stover award" comment- I almost thought better of it when I posted, and it was big of you not to take offense.

I still disagree with your reasoning, for a couple of reasons. First, I think it's entirely possible for a nation to be forced into "accepting" untenable conditions for a ceasefire from a vastly more powerful nation. In such a case, it's not true that violating the conditions of the ceasefire justifies a military response.

But secondly and more importantly, the aggressor nation still needs just cause to resume hostilities. Your busines example is relevant in the business world, to a certain extent. Party A does not pay, so party B does not provide goods or services. But we're not talking about goods and services; we're talking about people's lives and families and homes being destroyed. While Hussein's flaunting of the ceasefire may have removed America's obligation to abide by the terms of the ceasefire, it did not relieve any of us of our duty to respect the lives and homes of the Iraqi people. By the same token, even your business example is of limited usefulness. While it may make sense that someone who cannot pay for food is not required to be given food, we are still obliged to feed the hungry when and where we can. We have obligations that extend beyond our contractual responsibilities, and that includes a responsibility to avoid bloodshed when and where we can.

While Hussein's flaunting of the ceasefire may have removed America's obligation to abide by the terms of the ceasefire, it did not relieve any of us of our duty to respect the lives and homes of the Iraqi people.

I agree with that. If, on the assumption that the earlier fighting was justified, there is, presumably some just cause for using violence to make the nation in the wrong to submit - and this just cause is sufficient for using violence that will disrupt the lives of civilians, sometimes even bringing them early death (eg through lack of medicines) even without direct attacks on civilians. If the war was fought justly, ie without attacks aimed at civilians intentionally (among other requirements), the violence the nation with just cause is using that will cause harm to the other is justified. When the cease fire is abrogated, and if (after a cease-fire) the just nation returns to fighting, they STILL have the obligation to respect the civilian population...or, more generally, they still retain the responsibility to be fighting for the greater common good as it encompasses BOTH nations.

But this addresses how they must fight, not whether there is just cause cause to return to fighting. Assuming a just war, it has already been concluded that a responsibility to avoid bloodshed when and where we can , in this situation, is subsumed in a still greater responsibility to obtain justice, to establish a just peace, to return an essential good to a wronged party, etc. This good has not yet been achieved by a cease-fire, so the underlying purpose to the war, the underlying good goal that justifies fighting, still remains to be made real. If the lack of that good justified fighting to begin with, that remains in the background as a valid justification still. We must never equate a cease-fire with the just peace that is the object of going to war.

I am not arguing that all of Bush's decisions were just decisions. For one thing, I think that his failure to look forward to Iraq after major hostilities implies a refusal to adequately consider one of the prerequisites for just war: that the good intended has a reasonable chance of being achieved. Though it would have been somewhat hard to make this case as clearly before the war as after. I also think that a number of valid issues can be raised about the ius in bello (just in carrying out the war) situation, as opposed to ius ad bellum situation (just for getting into war). My point is only about the ius ad bellum specific requirement that in order to enter into war the nation must have just cause.

"The minority intelligence in this case was the good intelligence, and this was knowable at the time, not just because some people held that it was good intelligence, but because that is the way an impartial, third party observer, with no preconceived agenda to invade a country, would have decided."

Gadfly, this is more or less the precise opposite of what every associate if mine with access to any part of that intelligence has said (including the ones who opposed the war for other reasons). To a man, they believed that Saddam was doing exactly what successive administrations concluded he was doing. It stuns me that anyone would claim to have knowledge of what "any impartial observer" would decide based on intelligence he has not seen. Or, if he has seen it, that his TS/SCI clearance would mean so little to him that he would spout off about it on a weblog comment box.

As a guy who had access to a lot of the intelligence, I can confirm Billy's comment. I remember thinking at the time that if THIS is what I'm seeing, and the political leadership is being so emphatic, then they must have even better info based not only on what I am seeing but also on what I (and almost everyone else) don't have access to (e.g., the really tightly held HUMINT stuff.)

Those who opposed OIF tended to do so on the belief that it would be too costly--partially because they believed he WOULD use chemical weapons--that Saddam could be contained using lesser means (Walzer's position), continued no-fly zones, through sanctions, etc, (although sanctions raises jus in bello issues related to punishing civilians for the evil of the regime--an argument could be made that resort to discriminating military force is morally preferable to a sanctions regime.)

This is why it wasn't until some time after OIF that those serving on the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) were still convinced that the WMD's were still to be found somewhere.

I remember thinking at the time that if THIS is what I'm seeing, and the political leadership is being so emphatic, then they must have even better info based not only on what I am seeing but also on what I (and almost everyone else) don't have access to (e.g., the really tightly held HUMINT stuff.)

As an ordinary civilian I didn't have access to any intelligence, just the news. But this was precisely my posture at the time: that an Administration so adamant must know, through means it cannot disclose, that Hussein was building nukes and was cultivating al Qaeda as a delivery vehicle for them. So I supported the war on the condition that the Administration actually did know. I vividly remember arguing with some paleos at the time, who insisted that after the invasion we would find parts for nuclear bombs in Iraq because the Administration would plant them there, like a corrupt cop planting a dime bag on someone he wants to shake down.

If Ron Suskind's One Percent Doctrine accurately expresses the thought process that went into the decision to go to war though then we know that the Administration was not at all certain, even subjectively: that in terms of criteria, contrary to jus ad bellum, the Administration was deliberately substituting the perceived gravity of a WMD attack for actual certainty that such an attack was coming.

Billy,
You write that [a just nation] still retain[s] the responsibility to be fighting for the greater common good as it encompasses BOTH nations.

...which indicates to me that you understand the just war doctrine quite well. That's what makes your subsequent words so puzzling to me.

But this [an obligation to avoid bloodshed] addresses how they must fight, not whether there is just cause cause to return to fighting.

I think you're making a distinction that doesn't exist. That basic obligation to respect human life addresses both how and whether to fight. Either the '03 invasion was a continuation of the '91 invasion (in which case, a decision about whether to send in more troops is a decision about how to fight) or it was a brand-new invasion. Either way, the obligations stipulated in the just war doctrine apply to the decision.

This good has not yet been achieved by a cease-fire, so the underlying purpose to the war, the underlying good goal that justifies fighting, still remains to be made real.

Poppycock. The justification for the '91 war (the liberation of Kuwait) had already been achieved many years earlier. That's why the American people were not presented with the same rationale for OIF; we would never have bought it. A new justification was needed to resume armed hostilities because most of us had the sense to see that a renewal of violence needed a just cause of its own, and could not simply be justified by claiming that the initial war never ended.

If the lack of that good justified fighting to begin with, that remains in the background as a valid justification still. We must never equate a cease-fire with the just peace that is the object of going to war.

The lack of good to which you refer (the justification for the original invasion of Iraq) was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. At the time of OIF, the Kuwait invasion was a non-issue. I am not sure by what standard you measure a "just peace" but the fact was that before the invasion we were not killing Iraqis, and to begin killing them, we needed a damn good reason. My belief was, and is, that we had no such good reason, threats of mushroom clouds and sophisticated arguments about prior cause notwithstanding. The bottom line of the just war doctrine is that if you're going to start killing people, you'd better be sure it's absolutely necessary and justified.

While Hussein's flaunting of the ceasefire may have removed America's obligation to abide by the terms of the ceasefire, it did not relieve any of us of our duty to respect the lives and homes of the Iraqi people.

Isn't this another way of saying that Saddam's violation of the ceasefire is a just cause for a resort to force, but that once America resorts to force for this particular just cause (and others) it must do so in accordance with the jus in bello?

Of course, it all depends on what you mean by "respect the lives and homes of the Iraqi people." If it means that in the conduct of the just war, we have an obligation to abide by the laws and customs of war (jus in bello), then you are right. If by "respecting the lives and homes of the Iraqi people" you mean to suggest that it would preclude the resort to force in the first place, you are wrong. Besides, it probably make you a pacifist.

I think you're making a distinction that doesn't exist. That basic obligation to respect human life addresses both how and whether to fight.

I am merely referring to the traditional distinction of ius ad bellum versus ius in bello . I didn't make that up. Before one considers the correct method of employing force in warfare, it is necessary to consider whether going to war itself is just. In order to deal with that question, there are 4 standard requirements (well, some authorities draw them as 6 requirements), of which one specific requirement is that there be "just cause" for going to war - and this is just one of the criteria. So it is perfectly possible to speak of having just cause for war, while there are not sufficient conditions to justly go to war because the other conditions are not met. In addition, it is possible to have all of the conditions for just war in terms of ius ad bellum , but not fight the war in a just manner.

Poppycock. The justification for the '91 war (the liberation of Kuwait) had already been achieved many years earlier.

The cease-fire did not secure the ground won in fighting, because it did not provide for a secure Kuwait - a Kuwait that had little to fear from its neighbor - since Saddam had yet to have his teeth pulled. The only way Kuwait would be secure in those conditions was with our continued presence in force, with active patrolling - which is NOT peace. The objective, therefore, was yet to be achieved.

The reality, which many people just plain never bothered to pay attention to, is that the US was continuing to expend large amounts of money and manpower resources to contain the threat from Iraq, while also continually being tested in resolve (shooting at our aircraft, etc). If this is equivalent to "the objective has been achieved", then your idea of the objective has much to do with pushing around army commands on territorial maps, and little to do with true peace. Many a war is won on the battlefield and lost at the conference table.

Keith,Isn't this another way of saying that Saddam's violation of the ceasefire is a just cause for a resort to force, but that once America resorts to force for this particular just cause (and others) it must do so in accordance with the jus in bello?

Nope. It means that the decision to start bombing and sending armed troops into the country must be weighed against the same criteria as any other act of war. In other words, it must be necessary, and must not cause greater harm than the harm it alleviates. Regardless of the technical state of hostilities between two nations, both nations are obligated by justice and mercy not to do harm without proportionate need.

Billy,I am merely referring to the traditional distinction of ius ad bellum versus ius in bello . I didn't make that up.

Can you point to a single criterion in the just war doctrine that ought not apply to every tactical decision made by a nation waging war justly? If the decision to drop bombs and send in troops was not weighed against the just war doctrine, against what was it weighed, and how is a difference between jus ad bellum and jus in bello relevant to that decision?

The cease-fire did not secure the ground won in fighting, because it did not provide for a secure Kuwait - a Kuwait that had little to fear from its neighbor - since Saddam had yet to have his teeth pulled. The only way Kuwait would be secure in those conditions was with our continued presence in force, with active patrolling - which is NOT peace. The objective, therefore, was yet to be achieved.

Sounds like more hair-splitting. If the fact that we must maintain an active military force to dissuade other countries from trampling on us is not a state of peace, then the whole world is always and everywhere at war. Police officers patrol the streets of my hometown day and night to prevent civil chaos from erupting. That doesn't mean we don't have peace, it just means that the peace we do have is safeguarded by force of arms or the threat of same.

If you're saying that the only way to achieve a lasting peace for Kuwait was to completely disarm Iraq, then we did a hell of a disservice to everyone by not taking Iraq over entirely during the '91 invasion. That's something I could almost buy.

The reality, which many people just plain never bothered to pay attention to, is that the US was continuing to expend large amounts of money and manpower resources to contain the threat from Iraq, while also continually being tested in resolve (shooting at our aircraft, etc). If this is equivalent to "the objective has been achieved", then your idea of the objective has much to do with pushing around army commands on territorial maps, and little to do with true peace. Many a war is won on the battlefield and lost at the conference table.

That sounds pretty ridiculous to me. If the war ended with the equivalent of "Touch Kuwait again, and you'll be sorry," then we ought to have been able to pack up and go home, and come back when needed. In such a case, we would have had our just cause handed to us on a platter. But that wasn't what happened, and Kuwait had little or nothing to do with the justification given for the subsequent invasion. We were told that there was a grave and immediate threat to our own American cities, and that was why a preemptive strike was needed. After the invasion began, and no evidence of nukes was found, the administration changed their tune, claiming that the purpose of the invasion was to free the Iraqi people. Now that the Iraqi people are clearly no better off for our having invaded their country, I get to hear apologists talking about how the '03 invasion is justified on the grounds of protecting Kuwait, and that we really didn't need any other justification, since we already got it in 1991. I wonder what sort of nonsense I'll hear next.

Can you point to a single criterion in the just war doctrine that ought not apply to every tactical decision made by a nation waging war justly?

Yes: the just war criterion that in order to go to war there must be a just cause does not further measure every tactical situation once war is initiated. Other criteria do. They do get measured against the criteria of just war principles - the ones that appply, that is.

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